Countdown to Millennium

by Rodney Matthews, Nigel Suckling

For almost 30 years, the visionary art of Rodney Matthews has been published worldwide on album covers, posters, books, T-shirts, and now on CD-ROM. This book includes the first comprehensive catalog of Matthews' album cover work and provides a glimpse of his computer game designs and exciting upcoming TV projects. 100 color illustrations.

Genres: Art

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Rodney Matthews is an internationally acclaimed illustrator and conceptual designer of fantasy and science fiction. Born in 1945, in Paulton, England, his distinctive style gained prominence in the 1970s with his poster art which sold in millions worldwide. His rich vision, characterised by lavish landscapes, ethereal cities, strange creatures and mammoth machinery, became the face of both the music and literature of the era. He has illustrated over 140 album covers for influential rock bands, such as Thin Lizzy, Asia and Rick Wakeman, while also becoming a favourite in the genre of speculative fiction, notably with science fiction and fantasy writer, Michael Moorcock.

In a career that has spanned decades, Matthews has also made his mark in the video game industry, working alongside the likes of Traveller’s Tales and Sony Psygnosis, as well as in animation, being given free rein to create and design the children’s TV series ‘Lavender Castle’ for Gerry Anderson. These days he works mainly on his own intellectual properties, which includes a sequel to his multi-award-winning animation, ‘Yendor – The Journey of a Junior Adventurer’, and further tales of Oddney’s Otherland. Matthews is also a talented musician and is recording his next album.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

And so on to the last of the Rodney Matthews art books (brace yourself there will be another as I managed to get my hand Elric at the end of time) and this was a somewhat depart from the style of the other two.

First of all although though published still by Papertiger the format has changed meaning that at least in my opinion the size and shape of prints have changed. Also the book is published nearly 10 years after the previous edition meaning that not only has Rodney Matthews style evolved but also the media he works on and I guess he clientele. After all in his career he has seen vinyl morph in to CDs. And with the rise of other media he now has an entirely new world to illustrate.

So even though this is a different book to there previous two (you know what I mean) there are still some amazing pieces here. Ironically this book has mixed reactions from me. Yes there are pieces here that are just evocative as those in the first two books however this book covers a lot of material I remember from my university days and as such triggers a lot of different memories.

So looking back at these 3 books its amazing how far his style and career has gone and they he has kept his highly destructive style one which he is truly the master of. I look forward to his next book and hope that is not too far away. It was a pleasure and an honour to meet the man and one I will treasure.